An Imagined Interview   

   If we didn't discourage you with quotes from journalist Sharl Attkisson, we'll try try again. Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was an influential journalist and columnist for more than a half century. 

   Marvin Olasky dug up Lippmann's writings, posing his own questions as if to interview the late "father of modern journalism." These quotes are at least 45 years old. "Fake news" is nothing new. 

Does our 'cancel culture' concern you? 

   "It is clear that traditional liberties of speech and opinion rest on no solid foundation. Men cease to say what they think; and when they cease to say it, they cease to think it. They think in reference to their critics and not to the facts."

Much of what we read seems based on hearsay. 

"The world has become so complicated as to defy understanding. What a man knows of events, he knows second, third or fourth hand. He cannot see for himself. Even the things near to him have become too involved for judgment."

Who has the expertise we need? 

"I know of no man who can even pretend to keep track of (various levels of government), the industrial situation and the rest of the world. He must seize catchwords and headlines, or nothing." 

What effect do the worldviews of editors have? 

"The editor may know all about something, but he can hardly know all about everything. Yet he has to decide which is more important than any other in the formation of opinions. The news is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes, fears ... and the task of ordering that news is one of the sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. Once you know the party and social affiliations of a newspaper, you can predict the perspective in which news will be displayed." 

Sounds like groupthink.  

"Why the editor is possessed by a particular set of ideas is a difficult question of  social psychology. He deals with the news in reference to the prevailing mores of his social group." 

Is international news and analysis likely to be made up?  

"If I lie in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off, and be entirely irresponsible. Nobody saw this war. What correspondents saw, occasionally, was the terrain over which a battle was fought. But what they reported day by day was what they were told at press headquarters, and only what they were allowed to tell." 

In domestic news, (do) we get just the view from cities and major organizations?"

"It is possible, with effort, for me to know what a few organized bodies are up to. But what the unorganized are thinking and feeling, no one has any means of knowing." 

We don't get much street level reporting. 

"Thought comes to be what somebody asserts, not what actually is." 

We end up with an imperial presidency? 

"The power in the Executive is out of proportion to the intentions of the Fathers. It can be informed and it can act, whereas Congress is not informed and cannot act."

We're supposed to trust a leader.

"Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, bamboozle or manipulate their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good - not whether it will work well, but whether the active constituents like it."

Now, are you discouraged?

Truth is found in the Bible.

Jimmy